I agree with your point, but are you also implying that 'new medications for difficult to treat diseases' are a primary driver of 'ballooning healthcare costs'? I don't think healthcare costs are increasing as quickly in other developed countries while they do benefit from constant medical advances.
Which "developed" (hopefully we can develop some more) country is creating these medical advances? One might guess the US, but I don't really know. Any good studies I could read?
Well, if we are talking about recent great medical advances, i think Spain and France are leading right now with the discovery of CRISPR.
And i'm pretty happy about this, if it were discovered by an american pharmaceutical company, no other laboratory would have even heard of this before a patented product hit the market, and every research on the subject would be subject to a patent too.
